go. Would you join us?’
‘Gladly. We can hardly avoid it, right on our doorstep, occupying the whole of Smithfield and making more noise than all the cows, sheep, and pigs together. Aye, let’s set aside our troubles and visit the Fair.’
Chapter Four
A t the end of a week, I made my way to Seething Lane again, and this time I took Rikki into Phelippes’s office with me. Phelippes stood up at once and I saw that he had been running his hand through his hair from behind, so that it stood up like a cock’s comb, a habit of his when worried or harassed.
‘Ah, good, Kit,’ he said. ‘I was about to send Cassie out to search for you amongst those player friends of yours. I must have some way to reach you. These despatches have arrived sooner than we expected and I need your help.’
Arthur Gregory was sitting at my table and now got to his feet with an expression of relief.
‘I’m delighted to see you, Kit,’ he said, smiling warmly, ‘and sorry to have missed you last week. I am even more relieved than Thomas that you are coming back to work! You know how slow I am at this deciphering. Leave me to my tools and my seals. Every man to his own talents.’
I laughed. ‘Come, Arthur! You are no slouch at deciphering. You just take greater pleasure in your art. And who can blame you?’
Who indeed? For Arthur’s forged seals were works of tiny perfection, even more beautifully made than the originals, which he recreated from copying their imprints on wax. How he managed to carve these tiny images, in reverse , was a source of wonder to me. As I had remarked more than once to Phelippes, it was fortunate that Arthur was an honest man, for he could have made a great fortune as an unscrupulous forger. Instead, he dedicated his skills to Walsingham’s service.
It was often necessary for us to open intercepted letters passing between foreign spies and their masters, decipher and translate them, then seal them again and send them on their way. Without Arthur’s skills in first lifting the seals without damaging the paper, then resealing them using one of his forged seals to imprint the wax, all Phelippes’s and my work would have gone for naught. The tampering with the letters would have been noticed at once.
Arthur was a quiet, modest man, but he was a true artist, and I sometimes wondered whether Phelippes and Sir Francis gave him all the credit he was due.
Now, however, he was very happy to take me through the despatch he had been working on, pointing out those parts he had been unable to decipher.
‘It is in French,’ he said, ‘and destined for the embassy here. It was diverted through the network managed in France by Dr Nuñez’s cousin, but originated with Mendoza. It is essential that we send it on its way as soon as possible. Here is my crude first attempt.’
He handed me a sheet of paper with a large number of crossings out.
‘It’s a new code?’ I asked.
‘A variation on one you cracked last year,’ Phelippes said. ‘It seems either they think it is secure, or else they were in too much of a hurry to devise a new one. It shouldn’t give you much trouble. I am working on a batch from Rome.’
Mendoza was Philip of Spain’s principal agent based in Paris. He had once been the Spanish ambassador in London, ordered to leave the country five years ago when he was discovered to have been involved in a plot to assassinate the Queen, a conspiracy led by the Duke of Guise, cousin of Scottish Mary. Ever since, Mendoza had lurked just across the Channel, like some poisonous spider, spinning his web of intrigue intended to ruin England.
Arthur cleared away his rough sheets and threw them on the fire. Even in summer there was always a small fire burning in Phelippes’s office, so that we could burn everything that did not go into the secure files kept in locked chests either here or – in the case of the most important papers – in Sir Francis’s own office.
Arthur went back to his own
‘Gladly. We can hardly avoid it, right on our doorstep, occupying the whole of Smithfield and making more noise than all the cows, sheep, and pigs together. Aye, let’s set aside our troubles and visit the Fair.’
Chapter Four
A t the end of a week, I made my way to Seething Lane again, and this time I took Rikki into Phelippes’s office with me. Phelippes stood up at once and I saw that he had been running his hand through his hair from behind, so that it stood up like a cock’s comb, a habit of his when worried or harassed.
‘Ah, good, Kit,’ he said. ‘I was about to send Cassie out to search for you amongst those player friends of yours. I must have some way to reach you. These despatches have arrived sooner than we expected and I need your help.’
Arthur Gregory was sitting at my table and now got to his feet with an expression of relief.
‘I’m delighted to see you, Kit,’ he said, smiling warmly, ‘and sorry to have missed you last week. I am even more relieved than Thomas that you are coming back to work! You know how slow I am at this deciphering. Leave me to my tools and my seals. Every man to his own talents.’
I laughed. ‘Come, Arthur! You are no slouch at deciphering. You just take greater pleasure in your art. And who can blame you?’
Who indeed? For Arthur’s forged seals were works of tiny perfection, even more beautifully made than the originals, which he recreated from copying their imprints on wax. How he managed to carve these tiny images, in reverse , was a source of wonder to me. As I had remarked more than once to Phelippes, it was fortunate that Arthur was an honest man, for he could have made a great fortune as an unscrupulous forger. Instead, he dedicated his skills to Walsingham’s service.
It was often necessary for us to open intercepted letters passing between foreign spies and their masters, decipher and translate them, then seal them again and send them on their way. Without Arthur’s skills in first lifting the seals without damaging the paper, then resealing them using one of his forged seals to imprint the wax, all Phelippes’s and my work would have gone for naught. The tampering with the letters would have been noticed at once.
Arthur was a quiet, modest man, but he was a true artist, and I sometimes wondered whether Phelippes and Sir Francis gave him all the credit he was due.
Now, however, he was very happy to take me through the despatch he had been working on, pointing out those parts he had been unable to decipher.
‘It is in French,’ he said, ‘and destined for the embassy here. It was diverted through the network managed in France by Dr Nuñez’s cousin, but originated with Mendoza. It is essential that we send it on its way as soon as possible. Here is my crude first attempt.’
He handed me a sheet of paper with a large number of crossings out.
‘It’s a new code?’ I asked.
‘A variation on one you cracked last year,’ Phelippes said. ‘It seems either they think it is secure, or else they were in too much of a hurry to devise a new one. It shouldn’t give you much trouble. I am working on a batch from Rome.’
Mendoza was Philip of Spain’s principal agent based in Paris. He had once been the Spanish ambassador in London, ordered to leave the country five years ago when he was discovered to have been involved in a plot to assassinate the Queen, a conspiracy led by the Duke of Guise, cousin of Scottish Mary. Ever since, Mendoza had lurked just across the Channel, like some poisonous spider, spinning his web of intrigue intended to ruin England.
Arthur cleared away his rough sheets and threw them on the fire. Even in summer there was always a small fire burning in Phelippes’s office, so that we could burn everything that did not go into the secure files kept in locked chests either here or – in the case of the most important papers – in Sir Francis’s own office.
Arthur went back to his own
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